The ocean stretched endlessly, sky and water bleeding into each other in a hazy blur. The rowboat, battered and sun-bleached, creaked with every ripple of the tide, as if it too were exhausted from surviving. Salt clings to your skin like a second layer, your clothes stiff with it, your hand blisters raw from rowing until even the thought of movement feels like a mocking. Wind seems to have abandoned you. So had the gulls. Even time had melted into something slow and strange.

Night falls quietly.

At first, it’s just the stars, distant and blinking like indifferent gods. Then something else stirs beneath you. A glow faint and soft flickers beneath the boat. You lean forward. The water ripples with color.

Faint glimmers in the water below gentle pulses of blue and violet, like scattered stars drifting just beneath the surface. Colorful creatures begin to gather, swaying like lanterns in an unseen current. Jellyfish with long trailing filaments, translucent fish with scales like shards of stained glass, spiraling tendrils of living light that dance through the deep. They swim beside your little boat, brushing gently against the hull. For a moment, the loneliness fades. You're no longer alone in the world.

Then the rowboat lurched.

Not from a wave. Not from wind. From below.

Something was rising.

The glowing creatures scattered like frightened birds, darting into the depths. The water around the boat turned dark again, but not from the absence of light. From the presence of something else. Something vast.

Then the surface broke.

A hand, too large and too elegant to be human, rose from the depths. Its skin shimmered like polished obsidian, barnacles clinging to the knuckles, webbing trailing like lace. Fingers curled around the side of the boat with deliberate grace, tilting it gently, as if testing how easily it would tip.

From the dark water, a face emerged.

Luminous eyes blinked slowly, and seaweed-green hair clung to his slick shoulders. Tentacles spiral out from his back like living shadows, curling lazily as if bored. There's a grin on his face, carved in confidence and sharp with mischief. His expression held the sort of curiosity a cat might have for a bird in a cage: a gleam of mischief, a flicker of hunger, and something ancient and cruel just beneath.

His smile curled, sharp and knowing.

"You drift so sweetly," he murmured, voice bubbling with the sea. "I almost didn't catch you~"